On Nov. 17, 1970, Elvis Presley received an honorary police badge from Denver Police Chief George L. Seaton after Presley donated $5,500 to equp a police gymnasium at East 35th Avenue and Colorado Boulevard. This was the first of two honorary badges he would receive from friends on the Mile High force.

When you think of Elvis, you think Sun Records to Graceland in Memphis, the Tupelo hill country of his boyhood, the neon lights of the Vegas Strip. But the snowy slopes of Colorado? Think again. In the 1970s, John Denver might have had Colorado Rocky Mountain high, but the King of Rock ‘n Roll held court over Denver’s law enforcement community. He did pretty well as he pleased from the mountains to the city streets.

His generosity was legendary and, after his drug-related death, controversial for the Denver Police Department. Elvis was a fan of law enforcement. Besides at least two badges he wielded in Denver, he was an honorary chief deputy for the sheriff’s department for Memphis and a “federal agent at large” for Richard Nixon. In Denver, he showered gifts — Cadillacs, expensive jewelry, lavish ski vacations — on Denver police administrators and detectives, including narcotics investigators, a Denver Post investigation in 1982 found.

Elvis handed out gold necklaces as freely as if they were Mardi Gras throws. “Everyone was wearing them there for a time,” an unnamed police source told Denver Post reporter Jack Taylor 30 years ago. All the necklaces included a lightning bolt and the letters TCB, or Takin’ Care of Business, fat Elvis’ motto and the name of his band. The friendships took off after Denver cops provided security for show in 1970, according to accounts.